


A quiet ending

by Yossk



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternative Siberia scene, Alternative end scene, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Gen, Not A Fix-It, not even slightly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 21:32:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14777616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yossk/pseuds/Yossk
Summary: “Don’t bullshit me Rogers. Did. You. Know?”“Yes.”Tony takes a step back, looking anywhere but at Steve, the images of his parents’ violent deaths playing over and over on the insides of his eyes. And then it erupts, an explosion of rage sending Steve flying across the concrete, rolling and rolling. Bucky pulls a gun, the one he’d taken from the drawer labelled Romanoff because the name sounded familiar. He’s aiming at Stark, and the Iron Man suit is ready to fire, but before either of them can act, a shout rings out above their heads.A voice, a word that fires through Bucky’s brain with the sickening ache of familiarity.And then he tumbles to the ground and the world turns black.





	A quiet ending

**Author's Note:**

> I've thought for a while that I'd like to write an alternative ending to Captain America: Civil War, where Natasha doesn't just disappear twenty minutes before the end of the movie. This... isn't really that! Or rather, it isn't what I imagined that would be. But it is a thing that popped into my head and demanded to be written...

“Don’t bullshit me Rogers. Did. You. Know?”

“Yes.”

Tony takes a step back, looking anywhere but at Steve, the images of his parents’ violent deaths playing over and over on the insides of his eyes. And then it erupts, an explosion of rage sending Steve flying across the concrete, rolling and rolling. Bucky pulls a gun, the one he’d taken from the drawer labelled _Romanoff_ because the name sounded familiar. He’s aiming at Stark, and the Iron Man suit is ready to fire, but before either of them can act, a shout rings out above their heads.

A voice, a word that fires through Bucky’s brain with the sickening ache of familiarity.

And then he tumbles to the ground and the world turns black.

…

Steve watches Bucky fall and his mouth opens in horror, “Buck—“ He rushes to his side, the rage in Tony's eyes all but forgotten, pressing two fingers to Bucky’s neck. His pulse is slow and steady, but he lies still, eyes shut. Steve advances on Tony, and he’s sick of this, just so sick of losing his friends over and over again, “What did you do?” His voice comes out low, and more terrifying than he can remember.

Tony holds his ground, turning his repulsor towards Steve as he advances. He’s still trembling, his eyes glazing over and trapping him behind a wall of grief. But his mouth is slightly open and there’s a bewildered edge to his expression, “That wasn’t me.”

Steve looks at him, and he wants to call him a liar, wants to rage and fight and protect, but there’s a small part of his brain that’s still operating rationally, and it knows he heard a voice and it wasn’t Tony’s or Zemo’s. And he knows that Tony is all violence and anger and noise, that he can’t drop a man with a single word sent out into the dark.

There’s a soft thump behind them, the sound of someone vaulting lightly off the gantry above and rolling to their feet. It’s horribly, awfully familiar. Steve turns.

“He’ll be alright.”

“Nat…?”

Her face is in shadow, but it’s her, there’s no-one else it could be. They’ve worked together for four years, taken bullets for each other and stood shoulder to shoulder as the world ends. He knows her voice, the sound of her footfalls, the shape of her silhouette.

He feels something crumbling inside of him. Because, of all of them, she was the obvious choice, the one who would turn out to have betrayed them. But he had trusted her more than anyone, given her the real Steve Rogers and he can’t bear to lose another friend, not like this.

_Who do you want me to be?_

_How about a friend?_

And that’s what she’s done, all these years, she’s been a friend because he told her to. He feels anger bubbling up from its constant place simmering just beneath the surface. _She came to him after Peggy’s funeral, she attacked T’challa to let them escape._ It all runs too deep.

Steve advances on her, wanting to shake her out of this, wanting to turn back the clock and do this better. He pushes her back into the wall, and she lets him, his fingers digging into her shoulders. Everything is wrong.

“Steve,” her voice is hoarse and carefully controlled, as though she’s holding something back, “He’s fine.”

He searches her eyes, “Who are you?”

…

“Back off, Rogers.”

Tony’s a mess, the world is coming at him too fast, everything he thought he knew spinning off axis. And this is one final nail in the coffin, but worse, it’s one he just does not understand.

The other man tenses, and then shakes himself, lowering his hand. Natasha remains stood against the wall, but she’s looking at him and there’s something like relief in her eyes and it makes him feel perversely bitter.

“Don’t move, Romanoff.” He warns.

“Tony…”

“I said, don’t move.” Her eyes close briefly as Tony aims his repulsor at her chest, but she doesn’t move, “I’ve just about had enough of today.” His voice is rising, his teeth grinding as he spits the words out, “I’ve been in two fights, been betrayed over and over again by people I counted as friends and I just watched my parents get murdered. So don’t _fucking_ move until I understand why the hell _you_ can drop a _Hydra_ weapon with a word.”

Natasha just shakes her head slightly, and then she’s frozen like a statue, staring straight ahead into something neither him not Steve can see. Her expression is infuriatingly blank, and it makes him wants to lash out at her, to stoke a reaction. He wants her to feel a tenth of the turmoil currently roiling through his gut.

“Put your hands on your head and face the wall.”

She turns calmly, lacing her fingers together through her hair. He can barely see her breathing.

He nods at Steve, “Search her.”

A furrow appears between the other man’s eyebrows, as if he’s still trying to recalibrate, to work out how the three of them ended up on opposite sides of a triangle, alliances shifting and changing but not together any more. No longer a team.

“Nat…?”

Tony wants to laugh. He’d thrown her into a wall not two minutes ago, and now Steve Rogers feels like he has to ask permission to touch her. The paragon of honesty and integrity and virtue, until he’s not. Until it’s him or Bucky (or Peggy) in the firing line, and then the gloves are off and the real Steve Rogers emerges. The Avengers will never come close to touching that.

Natasha shrugs slightly, “Go ahead.”

…

Vienna, Berlin, Siberia. It’s a lot of ground to cover in a day. Probably more than a day, but she hasn’t slept yet so it doesn’t count. Natasha stares at the damp concrete wall as Steve removes her guns from their holsters, the knives from her boot and the small of her back. He empties her utility belt: penknife, garrotte, emergency medical supplies. Although what he thinks she’s going to do with those, she’s really not sure.

“There’s a razor by my left wrist.”

Steve feels along her sleeve, finds the concealed pocket, and pulls it out. His hands are warm. Then, she feels him step away.

“Can I turn around now?”

There’s a part of her that doesn’t want them to give her a chance. That wants to fight her way out and run away and not have to open up a part of her life that she thought she’d buried forever. That doesn’t see why she should have to sacrifice herself for this. But she’s already made that call. She stopped things spiralling out of control the only way she could.

There’s also a part of her that’s burning with so much anger, she’s not sure how her voice is staying so flat.

“Keep your hands where I can see them.” Tony's voice has a stiffness to it, as though he's fighting to keep it steady.

She takes that as a ‘yes’, and slowly turns around to face them. Steve won’t look her in the eye and Tony is staring at her as if he could bore a hole in her head. She wonders how they’ve come to this, how the team they’ve built could come to mean so little, in the end.

“So.” The word comes from Tony, weighed down with anger.

Natasha shrugs, “What? You seem to have made up your mind. Are you going to arrest me, or kill me right here? Because you know I won’t go down easy.”

“Nat…” Steve still won’t look at her properly. He’s staring at Bucky, still unmoving on the ground, “Please tell me what’s going on.”

“Stand down. Both of you. Then we talk.” She pauses, “I’m not your enemy.” Tony scoffs, and keeps his repulsor trained at her chest. Steve’s grip on his shield tightens. She shrugs, “Or we can fight. But I won’t come back.” She looks between the two of them, and she’s been trying for days to reunite them, but she should have known all she had to do was give them a common enemy.

Her voice is quiet, almost lost in the hum of machinery surrounding them.

“Do you really think so little of me?”

…

Steve drops his shield with a clang that reverberates around the concrete walls. He stands warily, putting his body between Natasha and Bucky, but it’s something. It’s a start.

Tony lowers his arm, but he’s not stepping out of the suit, not when the two of them could take him down with one finger without it.

…

Steve’s mind is in turmoil, because he knows she’s lied to him somewhere, but how far it goes, he just can’t work out. He looks down at Bucky, who looks like he’s sleeping, but isn’t and he thinks about what she did (about what she _could_ do, if she knows more words like that) and his heart hardens again.

“How…?”

“It’s a trigger word. It makes him fall asleep.”

“That’s not what I’m asking. How do you know it?”

“I stole them.”

“When?”

“A long time ago.”

He wants to shake her again, because she promised him answers and these are anything but. He remembers, years ago, railing at her and calling her a liar until she told him about Odessa, and the Winter Soldier stalking through the century. And he wonders, for the first time, if that truth was only to cover something darker.

“I’m getting bored, Romanoff.” Tony’s voice rings out, threatening violence as it echoes around the cavernous space.

She looks at him, eyes darkening. She could hold out, Steve knows she could, they could do whatever they want, say whatever they want, and she wouldn’t tell them anything more than exactly what she wants to. But she didn’t have to be here, she doesn’t have to be standing here now, and he can suddenly see what he missed before.

She wants to tell them as much as they need to know.

“Nat…” His voice softens, and he finally looks her in the eye. There’s something there, a flash of something that couldn’t possibly be fear.

She looks across at Bucky, and then away again.

“I knew him.”

…

Natasha looks straight at Steve as she says it, pretends she’s somewhere else and just lets her voice speak for her. She swallows, and then plunges ahead.

“In the Red Room.”

There’s a microscopic pause before the words, like there is every time she says them, however hard she tries to stamp it out. There’s a self-conscious weight to them, like they carry so much more than they should.

“They brought him out of cryo-freeze to train me. Us. For a while.”

Tony’s eyes are narrowing, as if the puzzle’s slowly forming something recognisable and he doesn’t like what he sees. “And you wanted to control him. Wield him as your own.”

He nearly spits the words out. Natasha shakes her head, a tiny dart to the left.

“No.” Her voice is lower than she’d like, the words aren’t coming as smoothly as they should, “I thought I could fix him.” Tony blinks.

Her eyes lock back onto Steve’s, and his are widening, his eyebrows are furrowing, as if what she’s trying to say is finally cracking its way past his outer shell. His voice is quiet when he asks, “Did you... did you love him?”

Natasha wants to laugh, cynical and hard. He sees everything in black and white, and he wants so badly for his friends to be simply _good._ She shakes her head, “I don’t think either of us knew what love was.”

Tony’s watching her, like he’s trying to work out where he fits in. He’s keeping a lid on his rage, but it’s not going to last much longer. “What happened?” He spits out. Because it’s obvious to both of them that this story doesn’t end happily. They wouldn’t be standing here now if it did.

Natasha shrugs, “We ran away. We weren’t very good at being free. They dragged us back and wiped his memory.”

“And you? Why do you get to remember?”

“Steve,” she says, but she’s staring straight at Tony, “To them, he was a machine. They wound him up and sent him where they wanted, and then…” She makes a gesture with her hand that says _this happens. You end up twenty-one and alone._ And then she continues, quietly, as though she wishes she could stop there, “I was something different. I had to learn." She tries to smile as she says it, but her mouth betrays her, turning it into something ugly and twisted.

“Nat,” Tony’s voice is quiet, and it doesn't escape her notice that this is the first time he's used her first name since she arrived, “What did they do to you?”

Her lips pull tight and she shakes her head, eyes straying over to James’ shadowy form laying prone on the ground, “That’s none of your business.”

Tony’s gaze follows hers, and something passes between them. _No, don’t say it out loud, Steve doesn’t need to know._ And even now, with everything that has happened between them, he shakes his head slightly, and his mouth stays shut.

Natasha wants to leave, now. She's done with this, done with them, done with trying to fix what can't be fixed. The shadows beckon, a safe-house somewhere in the heart of Europe where she can re-build and remember how to be alone.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Steve's voice is unbearably soft, and _hurt,_ and Natasha takes an involuntary step back, her expression moving somewhere close to incredulous.

"There's a lot I don't tell you. It's my story to tell."

They stand there, the three of them, in the ruins of a team that was only ever built on secrets and lies. They were assembled by a SHIELD that had the veins of Hydra running through its heart, after all.

James stirs. Natasha can't be here when he wakes up. She crosses towards the table where Steve has laid her weapons, neatly arrayed in a straight line.

"I have to go."

Steve acknowledges her with a tight nod, and both men watch her reassemble her gear and walk towards the door. There's a noise behind her, a voice mumbling in confusion, and she tries not to run.

"Give me a call if the world needs saving."

...

Steve watches Natasha leave and something leaves with her, something he doesn’t miss until it’s already gone. Bucky is stirring, and he bends down to speak to him, reassuring himself that he really is ok, that he hasn’t lost him _again._ He pulls his arm over his shoulder and helps him up, aware of Tony’s metal-clad form standing sentry at the corner of his vision.

“Go.”

He looks up. Tony isn’t looking at him, he’s staring away into nothingness.

“Before I change my mind.”

The two of them stagger towards to door, and Steve looks back on the threshold, searching for something. But there’s nothing to say.

...

Tony waits a long time,until the faint hum of quinjet engines has long since faded.

He pulls the ancient terminal off it's pedestal, still frozen with the image of his parent's last moments, and smashes it to pieces beneath his feet.

Then, he lifts off, soaring alone into the night.


End file.
